SecurityWeek

In February of 2008, two backup tapes containing data maintained by the U.S. Secret Service were left behind on a DC Metrorail. Now, nearly five years after the fact, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) is launching an investigation into the incident.

Researchers from Rapid7 and the Shadowserver Foundation discovered something unique last week. While browsing files on USENET, they discovered a botnet that has thousands of endpoints, and was able to operate without detection for months. To make matters worse, the botmaster took to Reddit earlier this year in order to brag about it.

Even after various compliance requirements and regulations went into effect, the healthcare industry has not had much success in reducing data breaches, according to an analysis of data breaches from 2009 to 2012.

Rapid7 on Friday released Metasploit Pro 4.5, the latest version of its flagship penetration testing and security risk assessment tool. The new release brings capabilities that let organizations simulate social engineering attacks and help understand just how vulnerable they may be to phishing attacks.

Dhahran - Oil giant Saudi Aramco said on Sunday that an August cyber attack on its computer network targeted not just the company but the kingdom's economy as a whole.

When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey, the basement in our older family home would flood several times a year. It was on a concrete slab and usually dried out after a few days, so it was okay. I came home from college one weekend and upon hearing my mom say she was going to carpet the basement, I reminded her of the periodic floods. She looked me in the eye and said, "Dammit Alan, I’m doing...

Even security experts have trouble detecting a potentially dangerous Website on a mobile browser, according to a recent study at Georgia Tech.

In what appears to be another case of the FBI taking credit for cracking a case they created, a former sailor is being charged with attempted espionage, after he allegedly tried to deliver naval secrets to the Russian Federation.

LONDON - A British student was on Thursday convicted for his role in a series of cyber-attacks by the hacking group Anonymous that cost the US online payments giant PayPal millions of dollars. Christopher Weatherhead, 22, was found guilty of participating in attacks by Anonymous on PayPal, MasterCard and other companies that refused to process payments to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Before arriving at Apple this fall, Kristin Paget used to break things at Microsoft. Now, her job will be to help secure Mac OS X for Apple, as the company that was once blasé about security starts to take things seriously. Paget’s LinkedIn profile lists her as working at Apple since September 2012 as a “Core OS Security Researcher”.

RIM is planning to release BlackBerry 10, the latest edition of its mobile operating system, on Jan. 30, and with that release comes an unmentioned security feature – password blocking. RIM hasn’t officially announced the protection settings, but a BlackBerry site in the U.K. discovered a list of 106 passwords that are forbidden on the new mobile OS.

Microsoft is planning to release seven security bulletins to close out the year. Five of the bulletins are rated 'Critical', while the other two are classified as 'Important.' All totaled, the bulletins address 11 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Word, Windows, Office, Windows Server and Internet Explorer (IE). The two 'Important' bulletins both address issues in Windows.

As the world races to adopt cloud computing, there is still a nagging challenge for IT security professionals: How can applications and infrastructure be trusted and controlled when organizations have seemingly given up both to their cloud providers? With Forrester Research forecasting public cloud computing to reach $57 billion in 2013 and exploding to over $157 billion by 2020, IT security needs to find an approach that works or risk becoming marginalized.

According to a recent study sponsored by ID Experts on patient and data security, 94% of healthcare organizations surveyed said they have suffered at least one data breach. This figure, the report says, demonstrates that uphill battle that the healthcare industry faces when it comes to information security. Further, the study says that such security problems cost healthcare organizations an estimated $7 billion annually.

Working with international law enforcement in the U.K., Canada, Romania, and the Czech Republic, the U.S. Department of Justice has issued arrest warrants for seven individuals said to have been involved in a multimillion dollar scam that targeted Internet marketplace websites.